Title: Letters to You
Author: Myoho
Publisher: Notion Press
Genre: Contemporary Romance
First Publication: 2021
Language: English
Book Summary: Letters to You by Myoho
The question was, who was “she” and who am “I”? From her willing kiss to a girl to the confusing hookups. All were too much to take in. Perhaps, such deeds directly question our identity, it makes our hearts heavy especially when you have been in a relationship half of your life with a ‘so-called’ right gender. But you never know the truth until the day you savor with ultimate certainty, till then it will be a fictional tale of some far, far land.
What happens when you encounter and become the main character of some far, far land allegory? It trembles you from tip to toe and as an outcome, first, you embrace it passionately but with time fear lingers and it creeps in your mind, and you hurl it out of your system so fast that total detoxing never really happens.
The sequence of on and off as well off and on relationships between two best friends brings a lot of drama to the story, which brought their kinship to the brink. It never stops making twists and turns and keeps us guessing about the true shade of this intricate relationship. This tale describes a most twisted behavior of our cognitive intellect where denials and acceptance are the two sides of the same coin and… love, discovery, social-stigma, healing, and hurt go hand-in-hand.
Book Review: Letters to You by Myoho
Do you ever think about a book and then wonder what the last person who also read it and related to it was doing or if they were okay? Letters To You is that kind of the book. It is a book about learning to be yourself and accepting it. It is a book about learning to be with yourself and be with your grief. And it is also a book about deep and profound loneliness, about cloying and suffocating society. It’s a foreboding and atmospheric tale about love between women.
Disha, a victim of childhood sexual abuse, who falls in love with a girl at the age of 17. After her parents found out about it and humiliated her for her sexuality, and in doing so, pushed away her former best friend. She gets married and moves to another place with her husband. She meets Kiah at her work place and fall in love with her. Kiah has also similar feelings for Disha but couldn’t understand it. They both write letters to each other admitting their own feelings.
But it’s not just a romance between Disha and Kiah. That is perhaps the saddest part. Being queer and in love with your best friend is different than being straight and in love with your best friend. One is an experience in love, and the other is also that, but with an added experience of fear – not of rejection but of disgust. Letters To You carries a variety of themes that have to be addressed: identity, gender roles, and sexuality. Yet, alongside these concepts were the universal themes found: passion, betrayal, redemption, and love.
The author gets so many things right. From leaving your home and friends and childhood behind, to tackling loneliness, grief, friendship, f/f love, heartbreak, and so much more. But I especially want to address how Disha’s broken longing felt so palpable. I could virtually feel her grief coming off the page, which is by no means an easy feat to achieve in writing. In hardboiled prose, Myoho fully renders the both main characters’ inner lives, their sense of apprehension and self doubt, and the author expertly captures their near-obsessive reverence for each other as well as their resentment toward the societal norms.
Letters To You by Myoho is not an action-packed story and it will not make you scream at One Specific Significant Line. It is a book to feel, a book to hurt, and a book to heal. Myoho has written an incredibly quiet, an incredibly subtle story. It was filled with teenage angst and drama, broken hearts, friendship, love, it had everything a good YA should have including all the feels.
